


Brandy Bitters, Pining and Charcoal Fingers.

by Durtyburd



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art Student Keith (Voltron), Casual Sex, College Student Keith (Voltron), Depressed Keith (Voltron), How Do I Tag, Implied Sexual Content, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Kerberos Mission, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Keith (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) is Missing, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 14:01:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20601983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Durtyburd/pseuds/Durtyburd
Summary: The first time it happened, it was an accident.Tipsy, slurring and body running fever-hot, Keith fell into Shiro’s bed as a stranger at a random bar.He hazily remembers coming apart under warm hands, easy as breathing.---------KERBEROS MISSION: CREW MISSING – ASSUMED DEAD.Shiro’s – Takashi’s image fluctuates on the screen for a moment, and Keith can’t bear to look. It feels wrong, this encompassing flood of disbelief, of shock, of grief. Shiro wasn’t his. He never was.So why does Keith feel the tide pulling him under?---------Basically an angsty alcoholic art student Keith coping with loss and pining relentlessly?I love these characters... That's why I put them through these things.





	Brandy Bitters, Pining and Charcoal Fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: I haven't written in years, so this might be a little clunky!  
I'm not sure if I'll turn this into a multi chapter thing. At the moment this is just me getting my toes wet again.
> 
> Pleaaaase be nice!  
Enjoy :)

The first time it happened, it was an accident.

Tipsy, slurring and body running fever-hot, Keith fell into Shiro’s bed as a stranger at a random bar. Too drunk to really know which way was up, just sober enough to feel the arousal burning through his veins and leaving his nerves tingling after every sweeping rush of heat.    
He hazily remembers coming apart under warm hands, easy as breathing.    
  
He doesn’t cling to the overwhelming, alien draw he felt to the man sleeping beside him the next morning, golden sunrise bronzing his perfect face. He doesn’t linger.   
He doesn’t.

The second time, Keith won’t admit that he went looking for Shiro. Won’t admit that he searched that same bar the next Friday night for that foggily familiar figure, and broad shoulders and warm, bright smile that felt like the sun coming from beneath a cloud just to shine on Keith. He won’t.

And he certainly won’t admit that not a drop of liquor touched his lips that night as he fell back onto Shiro’s bedsheets, entangled in his strong arms, though he could taste the distinctly fruity note of tropical mixers on Shiro’s. The taste soured in his own mouth, turning bitter and rancid. A drunk mistake. That’s all this ever was to Shiro…   
…All it ever was to Keith, he tells himself.

And if he spills his cheap coffee all over grey sweats that Sunday, Shiro’s image blazoned across the evening news and the reporter crowing about “esteemed astronauts” and “exploratory missions of outer planets.”, well that’s between him and the ugly floral print of his second-hand couch.

Takashi Shirogane. 

Keith feels a sudden surge of irritation itch under his skin. Of course, the handsome…hot, hot stranger at the bar was a fucking astronaut. Probably looking for a fling before he leaves, some blank face to give himself to shallowly. Fuck.

His leather jeans from the night before clunk around in the washer, and later, he’ll curse about the little balls of white pulp that once was a slip of goofy paw print note paper with a phone number hastily scrawled on it. 

For now, he curses about the noise it makes, and the coffee stain on his clothes.

-

The trees brown their leaves in submission to the coming chill, and the cold shakes them from their boughs. Keith’s gas heater whirrs and clunks pathetically in an attempt to heat the lounge room.

The neighbours don’t hear the TV turn on, but they hear the mug break into a billion pieces on the tile.   
  
KERBEROS MISSION: CREW MISSING – ASSUMED DEAD.

Shiro’s – Takashi’s image fluctuates on the screen for a moment, and Keith can’t bear to look. It feels wrong, this encompassing flood of disbelief, of shock, of grief. Shiro wasn’t his. He never was.    
So why does Keith feel the tide pulling him under?—

Keith hates the cold. Can’t bear the slippery chill of snow underfoot. And he hates it especially when a new semester rolls around and he must brave the unsheltered trek across the campus to the art rooms.

“What the fuck is all our money going to if not covered fucking walkways?” Keith shivers out. Ezor cackles.   
“What do you mean ‘our’ money? Last I checked, you haven’t repaid a cent of your loans…That’s the government’s money, Keefy boy.”   
Keith felt his lip curl. “Well, they could have at least delegated the money a bit better.”

Ezor spat a lock of her own hair out of her mouth and adjusted her obnoxiously thick scarf. “I think losing a few toes might make you a better artist. Look at Van Gogh.” Keith felt a pang of indignation. He was quite fond of having all ten toes.   
“Van Gogh is a-“   
“Wow would you look at the time!” Ezor interrupted, raising her voice over Keith and the beginning howls of the wind. “I’m late for English Lit!”   
“You’re a dance major, we have movement theory now!”   
“BYEEEEEE, KEITHY!” 

Keith mumbled swears at her retreating back as she spun on her heel and headed most definitely not towards the dance studio  _ or  _ the art rooms  _ or _ the literature building, but the car park.   
God help her if she didn’t come back with a hot chocolate for Keith.

-

The art room is thankfully heated, and Keith revels in the way his muscles defrost as he steps inside.

His lecturer quirks his eyebrows at Keith as he walks by, and Keith braces for the inevitable.   
“Hello there, paladin! Was beginning to think we’d lost you to the chill. You’d make a wonderful ice sculpture, I’m sure!”

“Afternoon, professor Smythe.” Keith mumbled, wishing he could cover his head with his art bag and promptly melt into the floor as eyes turned to stare.   
“Please, it’s Coran. You know that!” Came the tsking reply, moustache dancing in a way that just wasn’t normal. Keith offered nothing but an invisible eyeroll and a ‘mm’ of agreeance as he slunk into his regular seat and disappeared behind his easel. Coran seemed nonplussed, and immediately leapt into the coursework in that booming, eccentric voice of his.

Keith’s gloved hands slipped briefly on the cover of his folio as he opened it, and he paused to tug off the sleet-soggy fleece and plop them unceremoniously atop his bag at his feet.

Chilled fingers grip the starting pages of his folio and start to flick through, trying to find last night’s sketches, though the memory of making them is shadowed with bourbon and barely there. But there they are, nonetheless, messy charcoal smudges that mesh and meld to form definite shapes, tears in cheap printer paper from clumsy erasing crammed hastily in the plastic sheaths. 

Hands, eyes, shoulders and arms. The perfectly cut triangle of a familiar torso. Keith’s hands are strangely steadier when he’s drunk, the memory of these shapes become clearer, and the hurt stings less when he doesn’t have to remember it in the morning. But Drunk Keith doesn’t consider Sober Keith when he stuffs them in his folio instead of balling them up and putting them in the garbage, and so Sober Keith is left to stare blankly at sketches he never remembered making, of a body his brain can barely recall, but his heart conjures the feelings there with aching accuracy every time.

Drunk Keith is an inconsiderate asshole. Sober Keith is pathetic. Hopelessly in love with a missing man from a one-night stand.

And so, he caves, picking up his sketchbook and charcoal and beginning to draw. His hands know now, the rhythm ingrained, and angles of Shiro come to life on the page with the barest conscious guidance from Keith. A tall, strong body leaned against a bar in a club Keith can still remember the smell of if he closes his eyes and concentrates, but he doesn’t.

Shadowy, dark planes of a bare chest, a muscled neck and broad, warm hands. Sounds swirl inside his head, thick and disfigured, as though his head was underwater. Like Keith had opened himself to that old tide of misplaced grief and let it consume him wholly, drowning him from within.

His hands felt almost like they belonged to someone else as they skated the paper - his cramping fingers from the odd angle, and the fact that he actually had to guide them non withstanding - sketching out a body he truthfully felt like he hardly remembered. He was sure Coran was saying something to the class of consequence, but Keith was intently focused on something else entirely. He was sure it would come up in the lecture recording. 

He paused a moment as the person in front of him dropped their folio down with a loud 'CLACK', lifting his hand so he wouldn't smudge his lines as he looked up, breaking his concentration. 

Ezor was sitting in her usual place to his left, sipping from an obnoxiously bright orange travel mug and staring at the front of the room where Coran was enthusiastically gesticulating. Keith hadn't even seen her come in. 

She must have noticed him staring from the corner of her eye, because her lips quirked up in a slight smirk and she handed Keith across a paper cup that was warm to the touch. 

"Thank you." He mouthed at her, smelling the sweet, chocolatey scent wafting from inside the cup. God, she was an angel sometimes.

"Who you sketchin'?" She asked, making no attempt to lower her voice. Coran made a dramatic face at her, pausing, then immediately picking up where he had stopped. Keith slunk down further in his seat in shame and made a move to close his book. 

" _ No one _ ." He hissed, and she grinned at him predatorially.  _ Shit.  _

Keith sometimes forgot how fast she could move, as she immediately launched from her seat to snatch his folio from his hands, knocking her things off her lap and sending them clattering to the floor.  _ Loudly.  _

" _ Ezor! _ "

"Ehem."

Keith froze. Coran was standing with his hands on his hips. He hated to be interrupted during a lecture. Keith felt heat flood his face. Ezor sat back down with Keith's folio in her hands, grinning triumphantly and not the least bit sorry for it. And the worst part of it was, others had turned to stare at the disturbance. Keith shot a few to his right a filthy look. 

"Thank you Keith. Ezor." Coran said, his moustache giving an indignant twitch. "As I was saying-" 

" _ Give it back, Ezor _ ." Keith whispered, but Ezor leaned precariously to her right out of his reach, the chair beneath her squeaking mutely as she flicked through the pages. 

"Hm. Not my type, but nice." She remarked, tossing his folio playfully back at him when she was done. Keith grabbed it before it could hit the table and make more noise, bringing it protectively to his chest. "So who's the hot muse?" 

"No one." Keith said, tone clipped. 

"Well, if you're done obsessively sketching this 'no one.', wanna join me and Zethrid after class? We're going to Altea tonight for drinks with Axca." 

"I don't wanna go out to a bar with my sister, no." Keith murmured, rubbing his charcoal blackened fingers off on his jeans. 

"C'mon, Keefy. Axca says you haven't left your apartment for anything in ages. Pidge and Lance told her you haven't been to theirs for weeks, and you won't pick up Lance's calls."

"When do I ever pick up Lance's calls?" 

"Alright fair point. But seriously, c'mon." Ezor flicker her scarf at him and made ridiculous puppy eyes. Keith felt a wave of exhaustion and shook his head. 

"I think I'm gonna just turn in early for the night, Ezor. Thank you, though."

Keith pretended that the next look she shot him wasn't pity. 

He didn't need or want pity. 

-

The documentary on the TV is muffled to Keith's ears by 7:30 that night, a bottle of bourbon nursed in his lap and chaoroal sticks and pencils scattered around him, falling in between the sofa cushions. 

He takes a quick swig and grimaces at the taste.

He falls asleep there, atop his sketches and leaning onto the couch arm, his phone screen lighting up with texts he won't answer til morning while he's hugging the toilet bowl and nursing a headache. He leans and closes his eyes, and is asleep before the salty tracks of tears on his face have the chance to dry. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
If you want, you can find me on twt @durtyburdsugar!


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